Climate Audit

sonicfrog

I can just here RC Gavin or Mann now: “These people just don’t understand. They do now have the proper scientific knowedge to evaluate our work”.

Bob Koss

Forecasting Bet

Last week we told you about an expert in forecasting who challenged Al Gore to a $10,000 bet over who could more accurately predict global temperature increases.

Professor Scott Armstrong contends that most climate change forecasts use bad methodology, and that global temps will not rise dramatically as Gore predicts.

Now the professor has received his answer from Gore ‘€” thanks, but no thanks.

A Gore representative said the former vice president is too busy to take on any new projects at this time.

Article

What kind of excuse is that? It’s not a project. It’s a freakin’ bet! What few details necessary to work out shouldn’t take any time at all and could be done by one of his representatives.

Even Gore doesn’t doesn’t believe what he’s hyping.

Judith Curry

Interesting post. However IPCC does not make “forecasts”. They conduct scenario simulations, based upon different assumptions about the increase of greenhouse gases. These models do not project solar variability or volcanic eruptions, which would be required for actual forecasts.

• Terry Oldberg
  Posted Dec 21, 2009 at 2:23 AM | Permalink

  Dr. Curry is quite right in stating that the IPCC models make no forecasts. That they do not make them has the consequence that the IPCC’s models are not “scientific” under the philosophy of science.

  A forecast has a property that is called its “truth-value.” A truth-value is a variable which takes on the values of “true” and “false.” That a forecast can be false has the consequence that the associated model is falsifiable. That it is falsifiable satisfies a condition for the model to be “scientific,” under the philosophy of science.

  According to the IPCC, its models make “projections.” A projection lacks a truth-value and it follows that the IPCC models fail to satisfy the falsifiability requirement.

paul

It is these very “scenarios” that goverments around the world are using to determine policy. Of course they are not forecasts because that would take science as opposed to something akin to the I ching.

Stan Palmer

re 6

Interesting post. However IPCC does not make “forecasts”. They conduct scenario simulations

Prof. Curry:

How does the IPCC assess the quality of the output of these scenarios. How do they assess the utility of thse outputs as guidance for policy makers? Do they use these outputs to create modal statements suich as likley, very likley etc. If these are not forecasts then what are they?

Murray Duffin

Re #6
For the TAR IIASA did not even consider limitations to the supply of fossil fuel in developing their scenarios, and as has often been noted all scenarios seem to have the same unknown probability. Given present knowledge about fossil fuel reserves, ther is not enough fuel to supply the worst 50% of the scenarios even ubder the most extreme assumptions. are you suggesting that scenarios are in some way better than forecasts as a basis for decision making?

steven mosher

Re 6.

I am a bit confused, Dr Curry. you wrote

However IPCC does not make “forecasts”. They conduct scenario simulations,
based upon different assumptions about the increase of greenhouse gases.
These models do not project solar variability or volcanic eruptions, which would be required for actual forecasts.

I’m familiar with the SRES, so if you had not added the last sentence It would have been clear.

So, I’m confused by the “actual forecast” language.

So, if someone projected Zero solar variability and zero volcanoes, would it be a forecast?

Another way to look at it this. On a 100 year scale, some might believe that Volcanic activity
does not matter. A significant event may cause a couple years or so of cooling, but On the 100 year scale
it does not matter. If volcanoes do’nt mattaer on the 100 year scale.. one might as well “project” zero volcanoes.
Whch is what the GCM do. The other option would be to “inject” a random number of volacnoes between now
and 2100. The temp curves would respond and wiggle a bit, but eventually the effect disappears as aerosols
rain out. (Once upon a time Hansen did include “volcanoes” in his projections)

The same with solar varaibility. On a 100 year scale this variability is assumed by some to be unimportant.
So they ignore it. Put another way, I’ve seen some folks discuss sub century solar processes.
Sun spot cycles and such stuff. My sense ( I have no opinion on sun spots) is that No GCM take notice
of this because they think it unimportant. In short, this type of solar variability is not modelled and
not projected because they think it unimportant. They project its impact as ZERO.

PUT ANOTHER WAY, The underlying assumption of some folks is that on the 100 year scale, these two variables
are of no consequence. So they are PROJECTED, projected to be unimportant… on the century scale.
Now, you seemed to indicate that a FORECAST requires a projection of these two variables.

Projecting them as inconsequential on a centrury scale… would see to turn the simulation into a forecast.
A forecast with a projection of zero solar variability and zero long term impact from volcanic activity.

I don’t think this is what you meant. So.. could you explain forecast a bit more.

John Norris

re #6

Sorry Dr. Curry, from a section title in the 4AR Summary for Policy Makers:

Projections of Future Changes in Climate

If it walks like a forecast and talks like a forecast, you can call it model simulation, but it’s still a forecast.

Ian Castles

In a presentation to an IPCC Expert Meeting in Amsterdam in January 2003, I pointed out that, although the authors of the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) had stated repeatedly that the scenarios ‘are neither predictions nor forecasts’, the blurb on the back cover of the document stated explicitly that the report ‘describes new scenarios of the future, and PREDICTS greenhouse emissions associated with such developments’ (EMPHASIS added). In reply to this criticism, 15 lead authors of the SRES explained that ‘unfortunately the publisher mistakenly used the word “prediction” in the short text on the back of the jacket … that we as authors unfortunately caught too late to correct’ (Nakicenovic et al, 2003, “IPCC SRES Revisited: A Response”, Energy & Environment, 14, 2 & 3: 194).

Cambridge University Press was in good company in stating that the IPCC had made predictions. In a joint statement published in “Science” on 18 May 2001 (p. 1261), seventeen national science academies led by the Royal Society (UK) recognised the IPCC as ‘the world’s most reliable source of information on climate change and its causes’, and said that in the contribution of Working Group I to the Panel’s Third Assessment Report ‘The average global surface temperature is PREDICTED to increase by between 1.4 and 3 C above 1990 level by 2100 for low-emission scenarios and between 2.5 and 5.8 C for higher emission scenarios’ (EMPHASIS added).

John A

Judith Curry:

Interesting post. However IPCC does not make “forecasts”. They conduct scenario simulations, based upon different assumptions about the increase of greenhouse gases. These models do not project solar variability or volcanic eruptions, which would be required for actual forecasts.

Really? Here’s what Armstrong and Green have to say about that one (Page 8):

In apparent contradiction to claims by some climate experts that the IPCC provides “projections” and not “forecasts, the word “forecast” and its derivatives occurred 37 times, and “predict” and its derivatives occur 90 times in the body of Chapter 8. Recall also that most of our respondents (29 of whom were IPCC authors or reviewers) nominated the IPCC report as the most credible source of forecasts (not projections) of global average temperature

So I call BS, Judith. Try reading the document first, and then you won’t make such demonstrably untrue statements that even an non-scientist like myself can easily debunk.

Bob Koss

Dr. Curry,

From the Chapter 8 FAQ:

How Reliable Are the Models Used to Make Projections of Future Climate Change?

From Chapter 10:

The use of ensembles of AOGCMs developed at different modelling centres has become established in climate prediction/projection on both seasonal-to-interannual and centennial time scales.

Seems clear to me they are implying a prediction/projection equivalence.

You’ll find forecast listed here. http://www.webster.com/dictionary/prediction

Can you honestly say the modelling community doesn’t consider what they do as attempted predictions?

If scenarios are not to be considered predictions/projections why are they heavily included in a chapter entitled “Global Climate Projections”? Why is the chapter not named “Global Climate Scenarios”?

Do you reject the idea that semantic dissembling is being used to encourage the less astute members of the public into make the leap to believing these “scenarios” are the reality of the future unless we change our purportedly profligate ways?

David Pannell

It seems to me that this projections vs predictions issue is really important, and that there has been a lot of muddled thinking and muddying of waters about this by climate modellers and the IPCC. Climate modellers know in their hearts that they cannot predict with any precision, if only because they cannot predict some factors that will be crucial drivers of results (e.g. economic growth, technology change), let alone limitations of their models. So they soften their claims a bit by saying that they are producing projections.

However, a projection is really just a conditional prediction. IF a certain scenario (a set of assumptions) is true, THEN the likely climate outcome would be this. The value of the conditional prediction then depends on the relevance of the scenario and the quality of the model.

Now which scenarios do they choose to run the models for? Not a random set of scenarios, clearly. Hopefully, it is a set that reflects their judgement about the realistic range of possible scenarios. In putting forward their projections, they are implicitly claiming that the scenarios for which the models are run are realistic and relevant. In that sense, the scenarios are predicted. They cannot predict a single scenario, but a range, but that still constitutes a prediction in my book. (If they aren’t predicting which scenarios are relatively realistic, why don’t they look at scenarios like one that has a machine to produce abundant free renewable energy becoming available in 2009? Because they consider it less likely than the scenarios they do look at. That’s a prediction.)

Thus, while they may try to claim otherwise, the “projections” published in the IPCC reports are in fact predictions. They predict a range of scenarios, and then conditional on those scenarios, they predict climate.

If they are not making predictions, then their work should have no more status in policy debates than any other random projection, such as the “ubundant free renewable energy soon” projection. If the IPCC claims that their projections have policy relevance, then they are predictions.

• Terry Oldberg
  Posted Dec 21, 2009 at 3:21 AM | Permalink

  I agree that the “projections” vs “predictions” issue is really important but wish to clarify some of the details. The IPCC’s case for regulation of carbon dioxide emissions is a specious one whose apparent validity rests upon confusion of “projections” with “predictions.” In logic, the two entities have different characters.

  A “prediction” is a proposition that states the outcome of a statistical event. A prediction has a property that is called its “truth-value.” The “truth-value” is a variable which takes on the values of “true” and “false.” By virtue of the fact that it has a truth-value, a prediction can be false. That it can be false satisfies the condition called “falsifiability” for the associated model to be “scientific.”

  A “projection” is a mathematical function that maps the time to the computed global average temperature. As such, a projection lacks a truth-value. The 3 conclusions follow that: A) a projection cannot be false, B) the associated model is non-falsifiable and, C) this model is not”scientific,” by the definition of “scientific.” A “scientific” model is one that provides “scientia,” the Latin word for “verifiable knowledge.”

John A

Roger Pielke Jr:

When treated properly as an analysis of sensitivities to a range of assumptions, the real message of the IPCC is that the choice of development pathway is the most important variable for beneficial future outcomes (at least according to the metrics used by the IPCC), across all social scenarios and climate model results

I’m sorry but this is nonsense. We cannot judge whether choice of development is the most important variable, nor even rank that variable in the context of others, without proper analysis of climate modelling and the assumptions of modellers. Since climate models are representations of the modellers’ subjective opinions, then we can draw no conclusions in terms of future climate.

If climate models were really independent, and tested multiple theories of climate change (rather than just one) and presented a range of testable forecasts in a reasonable timeframe, then we might make some headway.

But none of those things have happened.

Here are some of the conclusions of Armstrong and Green (page 14, with my emphasis):

To provide forecasts that are useful for policy-making, one would need to prepare forecasts not only of global temperature, but also of the net effects of any temperature change; then on the effects of policy changes aimed at reducing temperature changes or the negative effects of it, the costs of such changes, and the likelihood of successful implementation. A failure at any stage would nullify any value to the forecasts.

We have shown that failure occurs at the first stage of analysis. Specifically, we have been unable to find a scientific forecast to support the currently widespread belief in “global warming.” Prior research on forecasting suggests that a naïve (no change) forecast would be superior to current predictions which are, in effect, experts’ judgments only.

Based on our Google searches, those forecasting long-term climate change have no apparent knowledge of evidence-based forecasting methods, so we expect that the same conclusions would apply to the other three necessary parts of the forecasting problem.

By relying on evidence-based forecasting methods, we conclude that policies founded on predictions of man-made global warming from models based on the opinions of scientists will be harmful.

Given the conditions involved in long-term global forecasts and the high uncertainty involved, prior research on forecasting suggests that even if the forecasting methods were properly applied, it may not be possible to improve upon the naïve, “no-change,” forecast. We do not even have evidence that it is possible to make useful medium term (e.g., one to five year) forecasts.

Null hypotheses are not presented by the IPCC in order to make even preliminary estimates of the models’ validity. But null hypotheses are essential to the practice of empirical science – its just that the IPCC isn’t presenting empirical science at all.

John A

Roger,

You’re going to have to be more specific than quoting my line to Judith. You’re also going to have to produce any statement I have made where I advocate not preparing for the future, or that such preparations are futile because as far as I can recall, I haven’t made such statements.

Go for it.

John A

Roger,

I am saying that this is tantamount to saying that we cannot prepare for the future without a “proper analysis of models” ‘€” which is nonsense.

The problem is in your reading of what I said, and not what I said. It is your implication that I made a statement to the effect that without proper analysis of models, no preparation from the future can be made.

That isn’t what I meant, nor can I work out why you think I did.

Peter Hartley

The discussion of whether the IPCC is making forecasts or proposing scenarios is critical for the policy discussion. According to the dictionary, a “scenario” is “a postulated sequence of possible events” while a “prediction” is “a statement made about the future” and a “forecast” is “a calculation predicting future events.” In order to make policy in a rational way, we need to be able to calculate potential benefits from the policy action and compare them to the potential costs. If the IPCC is only giving us scenarios where the events are merely “possible” but there is no likelihood attached to them, we have no basis to make rational policy. I fear, however, that the real situation is even worse than that. I suspect that the IPCC authors could not even honestly say that each of the calculated “scenarios” are known to have a non-zero probability of occurring.

John Lang

to #6, Dr. Curry, Hansen includes periodic volcanic events in his models. So apparently, there is solar, urban, land use and volcanic impacts built into the forecast models.

John F. Pittman

#28 I read your statements with interest. Don’t both imply that more important than mitigation at present, the real effort should be on economic delevopment, especially economic development that includes or allows in the future mitigation? In fact this appears to be an underlying assumption by the IPCC that economic ability translates to mitigation ability. Even though the IPCC indicates that mitigation benefits outweigh costs, both the ability and the amount to be saved by mitigation increase as economy increases? This also implies a ranking that should be used for the general implementation of policies. The best ranking is for policies that increase the economy with mitigation effects that are certain. The worst ranking is for policies that decrease economy and mitigation is uncertain. The majority of solutions will be in the middle, but economic benefits alone have an adjusted value of 99 to 1 over mitigation alone, and this weighing factor should be used by policy makers.

pete

John says in #33

Dr. Curry, Hansen includes periodic volcanic events in his models. So apparently, there is solar, urban, land use and volcanic impacts built into the forecast models.

What Judith doesn’t mention is that GCM’s aren’t sensitive to solar variability.

Agreement between observations and model simulations of Sun’€”Earth system variability differs markedly among different regimes. A major enigma is that general circulation climate models predict an immutable climate in response to decadal solar variability, whereas surface temperatures, cloud cover, drought, rainfall, tropical cyclones, and forest fires show a definite correlation with solar activity.12 For example, when responses to the observed 11-year cycle in total radiative output are modeled, the resulting surface-temperature changes at Earth are a factor of five smaller than those deduced from empirical deconstruction of the surface-temperature record (Figure 3). Either the empirical evidence is deceptive or the models are inadequate-in their parameterization of feedbacks such as cloud processes and atmosphere’€”ocean couplings, for instance, or in their neglect of indirect responses by the stratosphere and amplification of naturally occurring internal modes of climate variability. In contrast, general circulation models of the coupled thermosphere and ionosphere predict dramatic responses to changing solar energy inputs (Figure 4), but a lack of global datasets precludes comprehensive validation.9

Lean, J. “Living with a variable star,” Physics Today, 58, 6, 32, 2005.
Whether or not solar variability plays an important role in recent climate change is an open question. However, it is certainly odd for Judith to claim GCM outputs aren’t predictions because they don’t include solar variability “forcasts” when GCMs are apparently insensitive to such effects.

James Erlandson

Judith Curry on IPCC (comment six):

They conduct scenario simulations, based upon different assumptions about the increase of greenhouse gases.

Robert A. Heinlein on science fiction:

… realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method.

Matei Georgescu

RE#36, really just semantics but i would take it 1 step further: “good climate policy should not depend entirely on it”. In a nutshell, that’s my main beef with this report and its forecasts, namely that it is presented as imminent occurrence (e.g. see recent Science paper on “Imminent” SW US drought) when there is so much science out there waiting to be done.

Steve Milesworthy

#40
No, they are in reference to short term forecasts, so I am right 🙂 To be clear, the mentions of “forecast” I saw were in relation to pointing out that climate models were also used as forecast models; the implication being that the basic representation of the science was the same.

Your argument that the feedbacks should be assumed to be zero is perhaps more justifiable if the uncertainty is very poor, but that is not what they said. And having said that, they even have the cheek to give a positive reference to Svensmark for which the jury certainly is out.

Roger Pielke, Jr.

RomanM (#36)- You make a great point, and I agree. However, for good policy to result requires not just showing the flawed basis for a particular, dominant proposal, but also providing an alternative. In other words, you can’t beat something with nothing.

Critiques of climate models, absent the introduction of another basis for action, are simply endorsements of business as usual. I think that we can do better than that.

jae

Roger: absent some good evidence of harm, the “business as usual” scenario ain’t bad. The world is steadily getting better (see Lomborg’s book). Why screw it up with poor science and Gaia crap? The precautionary principle doesn’t make any sense here.

John A

Roger Pielke:

Critiques of climate models, absent the introduction of another basis for action, are simply endorsements of business as usual. I think that we can do better than that.

That again is nonsense. Let me translate what you’ve just said by changing two words for an equivalent:

Critiques of tarot cards, absent the introduction of another basis for action, are simply endorsements of business as usual. I think that we can do better than that.

Now where are we? Do we stop using tarot cards now or continue until something better comes along?

There is something in the prophecy business (or is it the projection business?) that simply assumes that in the light of current forecasting techniques and if current trends continue, we face a certain apocalypse. This kind of “certain knowledge” has been happening over and over for thousands of years. The Bible is full of prognostications using the data of legends and oral histories of times past together with current events (usually weather related) to project future apocalypse unless everyone reverts to a fundamentalist creed of self-denial, restrictions on liberty and acquiescence to an unelected permanent elite for the common good of all.

If you don’t think that people in times past weren’t in the “projection business” or the “scenario business” then you’d better read the Old Testament or Revelations again.

I don’t advocate “business as usual”, I simply request that unless those in the prediction business start winning some short term bets, then we should not be spending limited resources trying to bet on long term effects far into the future.

L Nettles

David Ermer first linked to this article on July 28 in the IPCC Comments now online thread.

Peter Hartley

#52 What can it mean to say “I would argue that there is enough evidence to suggest a strong enough positive feedback to take remedial action now”? It can only mean that there is enough evidence to conclude that the expected costs of not taking remedial action of some sort (unspecified) are large enough to outweigh the expected costs of taking that (unspecified) action.

In order to make a claim like this, one needs more than evidence that there are positive feedback effects from anthprogenic CO2 emissions — assuming for the sake of argument that indeed we have such evidence. We also need evidence that there are not negative feedback effects sufficient to substantially offset the positive ones. We also would need evidence that the natural fluctuations are small enough that we can confidently conclude that the future in the absence of anthropogenic emissions would not involve cooling. We also need to attach probabilities to all these possible claims so we can determine expected values.

Then we need to have probabilistic statements about the possible effects of any future warming. It is not obvious that warming would be bad on net. Do we happen to live in the best of all possible climates? In this regard, for example, a recent article in the American Economic Review provided evidence that projected climate change in the US would most likely be quite positive for US agriculture and I would expect that conclusion to holds even more strongly for Canada, Russia, Poland, Germany and many other places of significant agricultiural production.

We also need to take account of other possible effects of altering CO2 emissions — in particular the aerial fertilizer effects which appear to be strongly positive on net. Hence, the expected climate effects of prospective CO2 emissions need to be sufficiently negative to offset the expected direct benefits of those same emissions. On top of that, we need to measure the expected direct costs of whatever actions are proposed to limit CO2 emissions.

There are actually many steps to take when going from climate science to policy and climate “scenarios” and “storylines” are not a sufficient basis for rational policy prescriptions.

oconnellc

steven mosher, you write a well reasoned post, except for #5. For example, being male, I will never get breast cancer, yet I see benefits to breast cancer research. Being caucasian, I will unlikely ever get sickle-cell anemia, yet I see benefits to finding a cure. I have no children, yet I see benefits to research into juvenile diabetis. I will never live in Africa, yet I gladly donate money to charities that fight hunger there. Perhaps you did not mean to sound the way you sounded?

John A

Given that the current range of models diverge within the same IPCC emissions scenarios there is hardly likely to be a perfect fit, but I would argue that ther is enough evidence to suggest a strong enough positive feedback to take remedial action now. If the manure heaps turn out to be hiding a gold mine, we’ll know long before the costs have mounted noticeably.

Got faith?

Bob Koss

It seems to me that if any of the models were considered reliable by the modelling community, there wouldn’t be a couple dozen groups using different models. Instead there would only be a couple models, with a couple dozen or so groups concentrating on perfecting them.

Surely some of these groups must now be backing a dead horse. All the models can’t be right. If they can’t all be right, why do the modellers using the wrong ones not realize this and instead spend their time helping perfect the best of the rest?

Evidently the understanding of the subject is so convoluted that everyone thinks the other models have so many inaccuracies as to be irreparable; and that their model is the one staying closest to the yellow brick road.

Not very confidence inspiring. Especially considering these are all numerical programs and nobody is willing to put a number on the future accuracy of their own particular model. e. g. This model is accurate to within 0.5% per year.

airmouton

Re: 50

There is a large literature of model hindcasts on recent history and more distant prehistory, including test cases, such as model behavour following Pinatubo or strong El Ninos. Given that the current range of models diverge within the same IPCC emissions scenarios there is hardly likely to be a perfect fit, but I would argue that ther is enough evidence to suggest a strong enough positive feedback to take remedial action now.

So you’re saying that models are predictive of historical temperatures? In which case they should be predictive of future temperatures? In which case they should follow normal forecasting procedure, a la Green/Armstrong?

the certainty is that GHG’s cause warming

In what? A glass tube? Has anyone adequately proved that they cause an equal amount of warming in a complex climatic system? Is it possible to prove such a thing without a “predictive” climate model? Isn’t there also a certainty that aerosols cause cooling, particulates global dimming, and so on?

Re: 45

Critiques of climate models, absent the introduction of another basis for action, are simply endorsements of business as usual. I think that we can do better than that

If you’re lost in the woods, the conventional wisdom is to stay put.

Growing environmental awareness is “business as usual.” Doing better may mean improving things faster. It may also mean dumping iron into the oceans, or deforesting the Amazon to grow corn.

Steve McIntyre

I obviously think that a thorough audit of at least one GCM is long overdue, something that Armstrong endorses, but I think that there is too much rhetoric in Armstrong’s article and the subsequent commentary. Phrases like the following are amusing, but are no substitute for detailed analysis:

They referred to the following quote as a summary on their page 45: “Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality. (Nikola Telsa, inventor and electrical engineer, 1934.)”

Also, just because GCMs may not be very good doesn’t mean that AGW isn’t an issue. Personally I think that any connection between increased CO2 and 2.5 deg C should be arguable without involving GCMs and that GCMs probably introduce a plethora of irrelevant problems, which people have a tough time solving. I’m surprised that no one has been able to identify a clear exposition of this linkage, but just because IPCC hasn’t addressed this, doesn’t mean that it can’t be done. Why it hasn’t been done is a different question.

One more time, I urge people to be less angry. It’s a tone that I try to avoid and I urge others to as well.

tetris

Re:63
Steve,
We need to bear in mind that, while it has become norm in Western societies to treat being angry as undesirable, it remains a perfectly normal emotion, experienced by most of us under certain circumstances. Fact is, CA and other groups’ good works notwithstanding, we’re faced with governments around the world making policy decisions involving trillions of taxpayers dollars, and casually talking about 20-100 basis point reductions in GDP as if we’re dealing with “one or two scoops of icecream”. All of this based on IPCC GIGO [Garbage in, Garbage out] “recommendations”, “projections”, “forecasts” or whatever else they may be called in Orwellian newsspeak. As someone with a background in scientific and corporate due diligence and having served on boards and as CEO internationally, this is a political shambles and good cause for feeling angry, indeed. Your comment about tone is well taken.

Nate

Roger(45)

You make a great point, and I agree. However, for good policy to result requires not just showing the flawed basis for a particular, dominant proposal, but also providing an alternative. In other words, you can’t beat something with nothing.

What happened to “We don’t know”?

To reference the last post on here about Gore, I bet anyone $1,000 that I can use the movement of my three cats over an hour time period to more accurately predict average global temperatures for the next 100 years than can the IPCC(pick one scenario of your choice).

John A

Steve McIntyre:

…just because GCMs may not be very good doesn’t mean that AGW isn’t an issue.

Since multiproxy studies are deeply flawed (as you have shown) and GCMs “aren’t very good”, on what basis do you judge AGW to be an issue? What is the issue with AGW? Or even GW?

STAFFAN LINDSTRÖM

#55
oconnelc FYI, males CAN get breast cancer! Itⳳ
rare but it does occur mostly to men aged 60-70!
Just you know it…And how do you know youⳬl
never live in Africa?? Your personal “GCM”??

MarkW

I’m still waiting for someone to demonstrate this “evidence” of strong positive feedback. Even if 100% of the current warming were due to CO2 and feedbacks, it would argue for a neutral feedback. Since the evidence that only a fraction, perhaps even a small fraction of the warming is due to CO2 and it’s feedbacks, the evidence is in that that feedback is on net, negative.

John A

Just look at John A’s response to Judith Curry in #20. You have a real, live atmospheric physicist posting here and all she gets is sneers and anger. Way to go guys. Very mature

Judith Curry posted something that was demonstrably untrue. I cited accurately and to the point. By the way, another real, live geoscientist complimented me for doing so.

In this case, BS is how I called it. It would have been immature not to.

RomanM

Yes, DaveR (#72), this IS a scientific website and some of us “loons” are also “real, live scientists” in our own fields. When we see our areas misused and misunderstood in some areas of climate study, we tend to question the entire result.

JohnA has raised many good points in his initial posting on this thread. Climate models for the most part are not sufficiently advanced to be trusted as reflecting reality. Many of them are basically deterministic and do not include multiple external factors which are not completely understood. The shot-gun approach of varying parameters in all directions until the result says what you want it to say has no credibility. Putting error bounds or a probability structure on the range of results in these circumstances is just nonsensical. The modeler needs to demonstrate a priori that a model has the “skill” to reflect the recent past and the present situation. THEN, projections forward from the present with that particular model might have some believability. Statistical methodology exists for including unpredictable factors in these models and should be used. However, I am somewhat dismayed by the reluctance of many of the climate research groups to include professional statisticians in the process instead relying on a tightly knit circle of people who do not always have the proper expertise to apply the methods.

I appreciate having this web-site as a venue to hear from both “real, live scientists” and the many others who participate in the discussion. Maybe we can all not only learn something from it, but also have some input in improving future models.

RomanM

Steve Milesworthy

#77 RomanM and others
With a forecast you look after the event at a number of locations and decide whether the forecast agreed with the actual temperature/humidity/rainfall.

You can’t do this with a climate model because by the time you’ve validated it a) a new and better model has come along, b) three large volcanoes and a major development of new coal-fired power stations have fouled up your projected emission scenarios, or c) the runaway greenhouse has obliterated mankind (joke!). It’s hard to validate on past climate since there is a question about how “tuned” the model is and how good the past observations are.

As noted in #78 see the “climate attribution” papers for the statistical tests that are used for looking for the “anthropogenic fingerprint” in the temperature record.

So that is why the 2100 projections are projections, and why the IPCC report does not ever refer to them as forecasts however many times they use the word forecast in chapter 8.

John Davis

I think Niels Bohr had it right:

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.

Hans Kelp

# 79

It is nice to see someone admit that the IPPC screwed it. Thank you.

H.K.

Steve Milesworthy

#80 JP
You seem to be confusing levels of emission and CO2 concentration. CO2 stays around a looong time. So even if emissions are reduced (which some of the scenarios assume) levels in the atmosphere can continue to rise.

#82 MarkW
I didn’t say that you don’t bother to look at results of the old model, but this is a secondary consideration when you have a newer model that reflects current climatology more realistically.

#83 90% of the contributors here think the IPCC “screwed it” so you’re in the right place to hear what you want to hear 🙂

Ross McKitrick

#28: Roger, when you say policy does not depend on it, are you referring to adaptation or emissions abatement? I agree that adaptation policy hardly needs GCM precision, since we are merely talking about resilience to a range of weather patterns that we can specify based on historical experience. But on the question of the optimal emissions reduction target, which is the policy debate attracting considerably more attention (rightly or *wrongly*) there’s no way to get around questions involving GCM precision. If CO2 has only trivial effects, that obviously matters for the calculation of the marginal damages function and the implied optimal policy target.

Joe Ellebracht

OK, I will be the 99th person to weigh in on forecasts versus scenarios.

As everyone knows the UN forecasts not just temperatures, but also population. These forecasts also employ scenarios, mostly about fertility, but also incorporating specific assumptions about other things, e.g. HIV. Just because the scenarios are published as scenarios doesn’t make them non-forecasts. They are treated as forecasts by the UN. See for example the press release language here:
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2007/pop952.doc.htm

Here is the headline from the press release:

WORLD POPULATION WILL INCREASE BY 2.5 BILLION BY 2050

So having scenarios and relying on explicit named assumptions still allows a forecast to exist. But IMO if you publish a scenario and state “this is not a forecast” then indeed it is not a forecast. For example if the UN had published a scenario for world population with the explicit assumption of “sun explodes on July 10, 2007” they would have probably have also stated “this is not a forecast, this is a scenario.”

The UN wouldn’t do such a thing. A scenario that is not a forecast must have some utility to be worthy of publication. Scary scenarios without utility are not published by respectable people. A useful, non forecast scenario might perhaps be contingent on some really critical assumption, but the assumption is one that is unlikely or not knowable. Good then for contingency planning. Other non forecast scenarios might be exploratory, looking into theoretical relationships, to see if there exists evidence to support the relationships. For example, what if latex paint on weather sheds causes the temperatures reported to rise on sunny days above that reported in the past when whitewash was used. What would be the impact on temperatures reported across the US, given that 5% of the sheds were repainted each year?

But the IPCC reports are for policy makers, so the scenarios are not scientific theories being considered, because the policy makers have nothing to add to the consideration of these kinds of scenarios. (Even after inventing the internet, I doubt that A. Gore, Jr. knows how to use html.) Perhaps then they are for contingency planning. I think in this regard, they have utility. What if our climate models are right? How might we adjust to this view of the world? Should we clear northern forests to plant corn and use the wood to construct boat residences for all Bangladeshi?

However, the IPCC reports are not presented as contingency planning, but as the most likely explanations of how the future climate will be under various scenarios of future human activity. And not just activity, but activity that can be adjusted by policy decisions. Thus they are marketed as policy dependent forecasts. Here for example is a short excerpt from a speech by Prof. Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, Vice-Chair of IPCC Working Group II, located on the IPCC website.

Click to access Jean-Pascal_van_Ypersele_may07.pdf

Before the end of this century, (without particular emission reduction policies) global temperature is likely to increase by 1.1 to 2.9°C (2 to 5.2°F) if we follow the emission scenario B1, or 2.4 to 6.4°C (4.3 to 11.5°F) if we follow the fossil intensive scenario A1FI.

Besides indicating the sheer dynamism of this man as a speaker, it is clear to me at least that he is using the scenarios as policy dependent forecasts.

IMO trying to hide under the invisibility cloak of scenarios versus forecasts isn’t really an honorable response to the criticism made, unless the scenarios are specifically denied to be policy dependent forecasts.

Kenneth Fritsch

Re: #46

Critiques of climate models, absent the introduction of another basis for action, are simply endorsements of business as usual. I think that we can do better than that.

That is a God awfully weak defense of climate models and/or any new mitigation policies based on these models. There are some of us who obviously think that we can actually do a lot worse than “doing nothing” and particularly so if “doing nothing” means allowing for a more free market of ideas and actions to occur.

I am sorry to see this thread get side-tracked into definitions of projections, predictions and scenarios when the critical issue, as I saw it, was the formulation of expert opinion and what that means in terms of certainty and likelihood of conclusions on which critical mitigation might be based. I have been continually asking the question: How did the authors of the AR4 determine the levels of uncertainty and likelihood that they placed on their conclusions listed in the reports? So far no one has ventured an answer ‘€” not even a reply.

Further in this regard, we know that the AR4 uses/selects published reports to support its positions but does not in all cases pass judgment on the validity of the papers’ contents. In some cases, as revealed here recently, they use methods not traceable to peer-reviewed publications. One can put together scenarios until hell freezes (or bubbles) over, but the important points are: can we place odds on the occurrences actually happening and if we can what are they and how are they calculated. Otherwise we have something more akin to daydreaming with a scientific bent.

steven mosher

RE 90.

Well, as always, the Steves are coming to a convergence of sorts.

You note that “if the temp had remained the same as in 1988” we would not be having this
conversation.

I bet we would, but the explaination is long and I’m laconic. ( ok thats a fib)

Gavin brought out Hansen’s old “projection” “forecast” “simulation”
because it suited his interest. Simply, Confirmation Bias. Hansen hit the Mark. Huzzah!
Therefore, trot out that Pony. My point: Either you commit to a policy of reasssement and
publish your successes AND failures or not.

So, doing a reassement only when it suits you is, how shall I say, not exactly cricket.

Commit to reassesment, or pipe down. ( not you, just generaly speaking)

Now, the next question. Would we be having this conversation if temps had been constant since
1988? I say we would. I say we would still have the AGW conversation because AGW is held immune from
disconfirmation. Some excuse can always be made. “It wasnt a forecast.” ” We didnt understand all
the processes.” Quite simply, No one who holds the theory puts forward the following:

1. conditions under which I will give up the theory.

At the turn of the 20th century Aj Ayer put forward an intersting question to theists. is there Any
evidence that will change your belief in the existence of god. While I am not a logical positivist, Ayers
challenge has merit. If a theory is not open to a practical disconfirmation, then it’s scientific status is suspect.
( ayers was more harsh than this)

Finally, you said that reassesment is not the primary method of Validating the models. It should be.

VALIDATION means that you BUILT the right model. Models are valid when they represent the reality
they are intended to represent. The primary validation test is “does the model represent reality”
can it predict the future. Does the missile hit the target.

Now, The Issue with GCM is that they are Untestable. Not in the abstract, just practically. A model
that predicts how water will boil is easy to test. A model that predicts Greenland will boil 1000
years from now is testable on its face, but in practice, UNtestable. Science fiction. An intersting problem for
the philosophy of science types. It is even a more intersting problem for Policy. If the GCM are
valid, then they would seem to indicate that ABATEMENT taken today won’t show up for decades.
In short, politicians take action, with no measureable short term consequence. This is not a good
thing for obvious reasons. especially If the Policies cause short term pain, but only long term benefit.

steven mosher

RE 94.

Fair enough. So Here is what I glean: from 1988 (hansens projection) to present, you have seen the observation record reflect
an increase of say… .15C ( ???) is that about right? .08c/ decade, but accelerating in the past 25 years..
So, lets say, you’ve seen .2C since 88. ( somebody will check this)

And the physics of the models are “coherent” with this.

Now, comes the question. What will make you disbelieve?

I’ll use an analogy that I hope won’t offend you.

Some people believe God loves them. When good things happen, they see this as verification of God’s love.
When bad things happen, they don’t stop believing in god. They come up with Epicycles. Explainations
like “god loves me, but he is testing me”

So, from a pragamtic viewpoint, they hold their belief, in the face of evidence to the contrary because
they need to believe. Or they have benefits from believing. Or overturning a system of belief is
very hard.

So, now comes the question. What observation would make you give up your belief.
one cooler year, 2 years of cooling? 3? 5? 10?

This isnt a prelude to a bet. Just a question. Do you have a clear conception of what facts
would cause you to give up AGW?

MarkW

If you split your check from Exxon with me, I might be willing to change my name.

Barclay E. MacDonald

At any rate a valuable post Dr. Curry. Whatever we might say about it, it highlights a distinction I certainly did not recognize. In future readings my understanding will be slightly broadened. Thank you.

Dave Dardinger

BTW, in case anyone doubts the validity of S. Mosher’s “de-arking” note that “Ark!” is what God commanded of Noah while the Hebrew word “tsavah”, quite cognate with “teve” I’m sure, means to order or give a command. QED

Sam Urbinto

To the top, however you explain it, these are guesses. They are not science. Some of the guesses will be correct. Pointing them out later is bogus, because there are a lot of the guesses. You have to know which one(s), if any, are valid beforehand for them to be anything worthwhile.

The answer that’s assumed is based upon certain beliefs. The temps are really rising, the CO2 is causing it, and the new temps will have worse and worse effects as time goes on. (That this is stated more as fact and (therefore?) is probably wrong.) But based upon the “fact”, the explaination is that we have to do something to lower CO2 output, a lot, and now.

Everything is set up to make people think the guesses are fact and the underlying assumptions leading to them are fact. It’s put forward that way, and when it’s thought of that way, nothing’s done to clarify it. In fact, steps are puposely taken to make it as sure as possible that it’s not clarified. This is no accident!

As far as policy, however, if the apparent climate change is indeed bad, what is the issue with developing useful, cost efficient and beneficial ways to take care of the “problem”? Or in other words, we should be doing things that will be a benefit, since they’re probably things we should be doing regardless of the answer. We just have to be smart about it.

Or look at it another way. We don’t need to know the answer. So rather than spending time trying to find what the answer is (since we probably can’t anyway) let’s spend the time and money we spend on it now for other things that are of some use. And also, think about this; it’s probably already too late to fix the attitudes (or at least the way they’re going), so let’s use the time and money to shape the way the results of the attitudes take us to those things that are useful to do.

When presented with two bad choices, take the one that’s the least bad. Don’t spend time trying to make them both go away when you can’t.

steven mosher

RE 99.

I think we kinda all piled on Dr Curry, with everyone trying to take their best shot.
Not exactly good form. Next time I will take a deep breath.

Not that the good Dr. didn’t have a defensible position, it was just
a MANY on One fight. One person who has handled this kind of melee with aplomb has been
Neal King, back on the Parker Post. He took the shin kicking pretty well.

Milesworthy stepped in as a suitable second both in Parker and here. So, I think Huzzahs
for him, even though he doesnt like Pony’s.

Dibbs on his mongrammed towels.

Ross McKitrick

#90 The issues in Chris’ Pageoph paper wouldn’t be affected by an accumulation of satellite data. The main issue is the necessary but simplifying assumption of invariance for parameters that are, in reality, variable. He gives examples of parameterizations of the lapse rate and albedo effects in which minor changes in parameter values within the known range of natural variability can lead to qualitatively different predictions, including surface cooling in response to increased CO2. He doesn’t argue that that’s what would happen, only that if models always predict surface warming, they have to be tuned to achieve that.

Kenneth Fritsch

Re: #105

I think we kinda all piled on Dr Curry, with everyone trying to take their best shot.
Not exactly good form. Next time I will take a deep breath.

Re: #105

Please, Stephen, spare me the apologies. She gives as good as she takes. My problem is that the tenor of the thread changed at that point from a discussion of expert opinion and measuring scientific likelihood to a semantics debate of what it was that the IPCC was actually doing. It ain’t what the differences in meaning between presenting scenarios and making predictions are about, it’s how the results of the AR4 report are used by the media, scientists and policy makers.

I do not blame Judith for that. She made a simple point that could have been easily ignored in regards to the bigger picture context of the discussion. Unfortunately boys will be boys.

Steve Milesworthy

#105, 109
I suspect Judith was long gone before the pony manure hit the fan. Her tone suggests she has seen this strawman argument before.

Steven Mosher asks what observation would make me give up my belief. Well a jolly good drop in temperatures over a 4-5 year period that can’t be explained by a volcano or other significant source of aerosols would help. Alternatively, observations of weird changes in lapse rate supporting a different choice of certain model parameters 🙂

Steve Milesworthy

#112 Sam
I’m not suggesting that it should be obvious to everyone what the distinction between a “forecast” and an IPCC “projection” is, or even that the media will always fully understand the nuance, since they are terms used in a technical way.

But someone such as Armstrong, who is prepared to invest time to write a paper, will (or should) understand the difference. Even if they do not think the difference is valid, they should have the honesty to explain why it is not before piling in with their criticisms.

steven mosher

Thanks SteveM.

You wrote:

“Steven Mosher asks what observation would make me give up my belief.
Well a jolly good drop in temperatures over a 4-5 year period
that can’t be explained by a volcano or other significant source of aerosols would help.
Alternatively, observations of weird changes in lapse rate supporting a different
choice of certain model parameters ”

1. Volcano. etc We all know that a major eruption get’s a GCM off the hook.
( side question, can tree ring reconstructions identify volcano signals?)

2. Weird lapse rate changes… OK

So, you want a DROP over 4-5 consecutive years. Jolly good drop.

Now comes the question: what is distribution of
year to year temp changes. What is a jolly good drop? For the past 100 years
we have seen per GISS +.08C per decade +-.002C over the past century.

AGW argues that this rate is increasing. What is the probability, Given the
TRUTH of GW, given the rate of Observed increased, that you will see 4-5 years of Jolly good
decrease?

( hmm Do we need a baysian to look at this? dunno)

Well, if we are suppose to see .08C/ decade (+-.02 95%CI) then I would think ANY yearly decrease
would be a rare event. and 4 or 5 in a row…Given the decadal estimates, yearly increases, look almost impossible.
( ok I know this is Naive, but lets start from here)

You cant have your estimate of growth (.08C/decade) and your Tight CI, and argue that you need 4-5 years
of temp decrease. The data and the models and the error estimate make a year to year decrease into
a rare event, a 1% event. and you want 4-5 of these events in a row to give up your belief.

Ok.

So, you set the bar high. Thats ok. You set the bar.

Hans Erren

re 104:

MarkW is (in the climate science phrase) “remarkably similar” to SteveM

If you write MarkW upside down (flip the sign of the principal component), Then the W matches the M which is is a 20% correspondence! (Of course you need to truncate the S from Steve, but that is
standard practice anyway.)

Hans Erren

I don’t agree with the conclusions of Dr Tom Segalstad.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=820#comment-47075

Tom Segalstadt needs to study fick’s law of diffusion.
ref: Fick, A., Uber diffusion, Ann. Physik Chem., 94, 59, 1855

Joe Ellebracht

OK, I will be the 99th person to weigh in on MarkW’s name. It is clearly not orthagonal enough to SteveM to be used for a skillful estimate of height, so perhaps it can be used for age, provided the residuals are Durbin-Watson proof.

Steve Milesworthy

#122 Kenneth
I’m not terribly knowledgable about politics, but does this put things back on track:

My basic understanding is that each scenario is a what-if scenario – what if the population goes up by X and car ownership goes up by Y etc.

They provide a menu of sorts to the rest of the process – calculations of emissions scenarios, which are input intto climate models, which then feed the assessments of physical and economic pluses and minuses.

The idea is that the policy makers should then assess the scenarios and use their judgement as to what is likely, what is acceptable, and what measures should be taken.

Once you work out what the costs/benefits for each scenario are you can look at how the emissions are actually evolving, and you can look at how the understanding of sensitivity is improving, and target your policies accordingly.

So picking a 2C rise, such as what was done by the German Chancellor, is not an attempt to change the laws of nature, but is a statement of a commitment to follow the B1 emissions scenario for now, while allowing for it to be exceeded later should we decide that the climate is at the lower level of sensitivity.

Sam Urbinto

And by the way, how did this particular “expert opinion” turn out? And what would you call what they’re doing?

“NOAA’s prediction for the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season is for 13-16 tropical storms, with eight to 10 becoming hurricanes, of which four to six could become major hurricanes. … We are predicting an 80 percent likelihood of an above average number of storms in the Atlantic Basin this season. This is the highest percentage we have ever issued.”

Here’s what American Heritage has to say about the synonyms of ‘predict’:

Synonyms: These verbs mean to tell about something in advance of its occurrence by means of special knowledge or inference: predict an eclipse; couldn’t call the outcome of the game; forecasting the weather; foretold events that would happen; prognosticating a rebellion.

And Random House:

To predict is usually to foretell with precision of calculation, knowledge, or shrewd inference from facts or experience: The astronomers can predict an eclipse; it may, however, be used without the implication of underlying knowledge or expertise: I predict she’ll be a success at the party.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #123 – Nothing irks me more than a fire breathing radical who pretends to not know anything about politics or claims to have no agenda. I call that “Dr. Judith Curry Syndrome.”

aurbo

A few comments:

Scenarios are basically what ifs. Predictions involve selecting one scenario from another.
Scenarios are indispensable to one’s well-being as we proceed through life. When driving a car on a winding road, one’s mind is constantly creating scenarios such as; .what if there is a car stalled in my lane just around the bend; or a child wandering into the street between cars; or a police car hiding behind that next advertising sign? None of these mental creations are predictions, they’re scenarios.

In the field of science, especially in academia, unforced disconfirmation is a rare event. A more likely action when a thesis is failing is to first try to convince others that you were right all the time. The late Leon Feistinger, a renown social scientist, in one of his first works while still in grad school, wrote a book entitled “When Prophecy Fails”. It recounts his observations as part of a group of investigators examining the behavior of people who had made an irrevocable commitment to a prediction which ultimately would turn out to be demonstrably false.

Their target was a doomsday cult who had given away all their earthly belongings to follow their charismatic guru to the mountain top where they would be saved when doomsday arrived. When the appointed day came and went with no consequences, the reactions of the various members of the cult were about as follows. First they assumed that they had made a few small errors in the prediction and picked a new date a short time ahead. When this, too, failed, they reworked their predictions once again. The most interesting behavior during this period of disconfirmation was that they began to proselytize passionately in an attempt to convince others of the urgency and rectitude of their beliefs in order to avoid admitting to themselves that they were wrong. Finally, disillusion set in and some eventually turned on their self-styled prophet.

Feistinger went on to become renown in his chosen field. He invented the term “cognitive dissonance”.

I don’t think I have to describe the relevance of Feistinger’s work to the global topic at hand.

Jaye

RE: 92

Except somehow the IPCC fail to communicate the fictional nature of their projections to the media or to the public, and despite the fictional character of their non-predictions the IPCC claim to detect a high probability of impact on climate by anthropogenic CO2.

Meanwhile climate scientists, like you Judith, discuss their results in the context of the same anthropogenic warming; likewise failing to inform the media or the public of the fictional character of your discursive context.

The result is a kind of ersatz-science bait-and-switch, where you only admit of what-if’ projections when you’re pressed, but as soon as the pressure is off immediately speak as though real climate predictions had been made.

The same sort of carnival atmosphere pervades dendrothermometry. The entire climate science enterprise is rife with this sort of sloppy and tendentious thinking.

Is right on. However, if they set-up the model, run it, and publish the estimates for how the temperature changes over time, then they are making a prediction based on the inputs. Period. Suppose, I have very good model of a real missile and I want to see what happens to the kinematic boundary if I make the motor bigger. That adjusted missile doesn’t really exist, its part of a what if study, but it is a prediction of the missile’s performance with a change in initial conditions (size of the motor). Calling it a scenario doesn’t change the fact that we are making predictions of the missile’s behavior if we take 2 lbs out of the warhead and add it to the motor. The comment by Dr. Curry was an unfortunate exercise in CYA.

Steve Milesworthy

#126 Kenneth
The WG1 report discussion of model results indicates that certain things are “very likely” or “likely”, because they occur in many of the models for all the scenarios, and because previously these things have been formally attributed to warming. The “likely” temperature projections are given for each scenario which reflect the distribution of the model runs for that scenario. “very likely” and “likely” have numbers of 90% and 66% attached to them. I assume the words and meanings have been developed in conjunction with political representatives.

#128 John A
Having just reread page 17 of the WG1 SPM, which summarises the projections, I don’t see any weasel words.

#130
In the UK, the police are obliged to declare locations of all places where they may site a mobile speed camera. When approaching these places I will check my speed even though there is a small chance that they have set up a camera in that location at that time.

Kenneth Fritsch

Re: #134

Steve Milesworthy, by re-stating some of the WG1 contents you are not answering my questions. The authors of all the AR4 chapters have used terms connected to certainty and likelihood for the conclusions they reach in their reports. This is not limited to scenarios and climate predictions, but is interspersed throughout the report text. It is what gives the report legitimacy in presenting the information for policy makers whether it be merely in appearance or in fact. I will repeat below from an earlier post of mine some excerpts from AR4 that explain all this and leads in the end to the statement about “Traceable Accounts”. My questions to you again are: Would you like to see the details of the Traceable Accounts and do you think the IPCC should make them publicly available?

6 In this Summary for Policymakers, the following terms have been used to indicate the assessed likelihood, using expert judgement, of an outcome or a result: Virtually certain > 99% probability of occurrence, Extremely likely > 95%, Very likely > 90%, Likely > 66%, More likely than not > 50%, Unlikely

From Box TS 1.1 we have:

The importance of consistent and transparent treatment of uncertainties is clearly recognised by the IPCC in preparing its assessments of climate change. The increasing attention given to formal treatments of uncertainty in previous assessments is addressed in Section 1.6. To promote consistency in the general treatment of uncertainty across all three Working Groups, authors of the Fourth Assessment Report have been asked to follow a brief set of guidance notes on determining and describing uncertainties in the context of an assessment . This box summarises the way that Working Group I has applied those guidelines and covers some aspects of the treatment of uncertainty specific to material assessed here.

Uncertainties can be classified in several different ways according to their origin. Two primary types are value uncertainties’ and structural uncertainties’. Value uncertainties arise from the incomplete determination of particular values or results, for example, when data are inaccurate or not fully representative of the phenomenon of interest. Structural uncertainties arise from an incomplete understanding of the processes that control particular values or results, for example, when the conceptual framework or model used for analysis does not include all the relevant processes or relationships. Value uncertainties are generally estimated using statistical techniques and expressed probabilistically. Structural uncertainties are generally described by giving the authors’ collective judgment of their confidence in the correctness of a result. In both cases, estimating uncertainties is intrinsically about describing the limits to knowledge and for this reason involves expert judgment about the state of that knowledge. A different type of uncertainty arises in systems that are either chaotic or not fully deterministic in nature and this also limits our ability to project all aspects of climate change.

This box also referenced 1.6 of the 4AR where I found a reference to Moss and Schneider, 2000.

The paper references the use of Bayesian approaches and in its outline of procedures under 6 refers to a traceable account of how the estimates were constructed. How would one go about obtain/trace that “account”?

Thus in the TAR, we expect Bayesian approaches to be what is most often meant when probabilities are attached to outcomes with an inherent component of subjectivity or to an assessment of the state of the science from which confidence characterisations are offered.

6. Prepare a “traceable account” of how the estimates were constructed that describes the writing team’s reasons for adopting a particular probability distribution, including important lines of evidence used, standards of evidence applied, approaches to combining/reconciling multiple lines of evidence, explicit explanations of methods for aggregation, and critical uncertainties.

Sam Urbinto

Re: 1907 extrapolation

Hans, I’m sure it really requires some sort of logarithmic scaling or some kind of special algoreithm, but if I’m in 1907 and extrapolate the GHCN-ERSST trend lines since 1880, BAU is -.037 C drop in temperature per decade and 2.22 ppm of CO2 being added per decade. Which means right now, the global mean should be -.67 C on the anomaly and there should be a CO2 level of 321 ppm in the ice cores.

Instead we have about 65 more ppm in the atmosphere, are trending the other direction on temps and are 1.18 C higher than what the extrapolation says. And?

Is there some other meaningless period of time you’d like to extrapolate off the 1961-1990 baseline anomaly numbers before during or after that period, to predict the future or the current levels? How about 1909-1965 or 1944-1956 or 1937-1981? Or 1977-2007 to tell me what it will be in 2011?

Woooo 65 ppm and 1.2 C yay!!!! lol

Sam Urbinto

By the way, if you extrapolate 1937-1981, we have no warming, stay at -.05 C and CO2 goes up 6 ppm per decade. So we should be at 356 ppm and -.05 C by that. That’s 30 ppm and +.55 different than reality.

I must have used a better model this time! Time to tweak it some more. But of course, you can’t have my shource code when I’m done, nyah.

Paul G M

Scenarios, Predictions etc

The philosophical discussion is interesting. However, to repeat myself, in the UK, the gospel of CO2 rise=temeparture rise and the doomladen forecasts/scenarios/projections/predictions are taken as faith, every other advert on the TV announces the latest Corporate CO 2 reduction programme, vast sums are wasted on wind farms etc etc.

Mike Lockwood’s pronouncement about solar variation gets top billing on the news and the statement “They concluded that the rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen since the late 1980s could not be ascribed to solar variability, whatever mechanism was invoked” is unchallenged. So what rapid rise is that then? A Mannian one no doubt.

Regards

Paul

Kenneth Fritsch

Sam U, I think Hans Erren’s reference to business as usual was with regards to an economic scenario and not one necessarily involving climate change. If I am wrong then my reply was off the mark.

John A

If someone has bought a copy of Lockwood’s paper, could they send me a copy?

Paul G M

John A Re Lockwood

I didn’t have time to get the paper but try this link to the RS’s website. You might also want to look at their overview of “The Science”

http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/h844264320314105/

His bio below

Professor Michael Lockwood
Professor Lockwood is Chief Scientist (Individual Merit Band 1) in the Space Science and Technology Department at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southampton. He is distinguished for major advances in understanding the connections between Earth’s ionosphere and magnetosphere and the interplanetary magnetic field. His discovery that open magnetic flux from the Sun is highly correlated with total irradiance had a crucial result for climate change studies.

John A

Paul G M:

Paying ⡲5 for one paper is rather steep. I wonder if the journal breaks the terms of the Banff Protocol by charging so much.

John A

Rod,

Yesterday it tried to charge me ⡲5 to see the text. Today its free. Go figure.

Can anyone translate this for me (pages 9,10)?

For the cosmic ray mechanism, it has been proposed that the long-term decline in cosmic
rays over much of the twentieth century (seen in figure 4d and caused by the rise
in open solar flux seen in figure 4c) would cause a decline in global cover of
low-altitude clouds, for which the radiative forcing caused by the albedo decrease
outweighs that of the trapping effect on the outgoing thermal long-wave radiation.
We here do not discuss these mechanisms in any detail. Rather, we look at the
solar changes over the last three decades, in the context of the changes that took
place over the most of the twentieth century.

This I don’t understand. From my reading of “The Chilling Stars” the long term decline in cosmic rays over the 20th Century is the key finding of the Svensmark team relating to changes in albedo from fewer clouds and hence temperature rise and the key component behind the presentation in TGGWS. So how does Lockwood “settle it once and for all” when he doesn’t tackle it in this paper?

Armin

#152,

He doesn’t attack the mechanism. He tries to prove it is not a major role. Remember that – correct me if I’m wrong – sofar there is no direct link to T and cosmic rays. Only to clouds and cosmic rays. Of course clouds affect T, but does it do it scientifically? In this paper they look at the cosmic rays directly compared to T. And they don’t match …

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not claiming this proves or disproves anything, but this is how I think it is intended. And I mist admit it looks pretty strong, but I’m also looking forward to Shaviv’s, Svensmark’s, etc response.

Some comments do apply however

– Climax data goes up to around 13 GeV where Shaviv claims (as I understood) the energies required to up much further, so it may not be the best measurement. The paper says they included from as low as 3 GeV which would mean they are looking at the wrong levels (which Shaviv claimed in the past was the case for more rebuttals of the theory.)
– Climax readings differ from station by station (as RC conveniently once used to cherry pick to show there was no link). They use only one as I can tell. On the other hand, there are not that many as e.g. weather stations 🙂
– The T data is smoothed which hides the stall from the last few years.
– The T data is “primarily from meteorological station data.” Well, just look at the CA articles from the last few weeks. I’d preferred satellite measurements, but I guess we can do the comparison ourselves.

Note, I’m not claiming anything about the article, as I only looked at it briefly yet. I’ll read it later this week.

Rod

I note that Lockwood and Frohlich do not reference Vezier or Shaviv. Svensmark in the Chilling Stars suggests muons as the precursor to low level maritime cloud formation. These require very high energies for their formation. There’s an explanation of their formation by cosmic rays here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon.

I’ve still got to read the Lockwood paper. Notwithstanding the importance or not of cosmic rays – I suspect the level of low level clouds is still very important to climate.

Armin

#155, #156 and #157

Bill, Cal, thank you for the update.

I noticed also that they did not reference Vezier or Shaviv. Assuming this is not done intentionally, this explains why they perhaps missed the important fact of the energies needing to be high enough. As said, Shaviv gave this as a comment to several (attempts of) rebutals already.

Worse is I also see no reference to Soon, as e.g. “Variable solar irradiance as a plausible agent for multidecadal variations in the Arctic-wide surface air temperature record of the past 130 years” (GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 32, L16712, doi:10.1029/2005GL023429, 2005) or “Solar activity, cosmic rays, and Earth’s temperature: A millennium-scale comparison” (I G Usoskin et al. – Journal of Geophysical Research 110 (a10), 10102 (2005)). If one suspects that they did cherry picking, this isn’t so as also articles that refute a link are missing. E.g. “No evidence for effects of global warming or modulation by galactic cosmic ray” (Harrison, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 33, L10814, doi:10.1029/2006GL025880, 2006). This although thety do list other work of Harrison.

Perhaps there are good reasons for this, as one can impossible reference all, but I noticed that in discussions about solar often scientists battle with eachother without actually listening to the others point. Not unfrequently they are talking about different topics. Seeing the comments about energy-levels here I would fear this may again be the case …

Mark T.

They don’t seem to have a very strong understanding of signal processing methods nor statistics, but that doesn’t stop them, either.

Mark

Mark T.

Oh, I fully realize this, Bill F., which is why I used the word “seem.” These guys aren’t stupid, nor uneducated. Every signal processing specialist, statistical analysis specialist, or otherwise mathematically inclined professional that I’ve run into, when presented with the obscure methods of the Team, gasps.

Mark

M. Simon

John A,

I blogged this report at Principles of Forecasting on June 26 and left a note here at CA. I have a link in my blog post to the paper.

This may have been what you saw.

There were also several other mentions of the paper in the comments so it is also possible you are referring to one of them.

It got short shrift originally. Glad to see you have taken it up.

M. Simon

I’m wondering if the climate modelers take into account breakthroughs in technology (Lumborg does).

If Tri Alpha Energy or Dr. Bussard’s group makes a breakthrough in fusion energy we could be entirely off fossil fuels in 50 years or possibly much less.

Does the IPCC consider investment in such technology research as essential as the money going into climate science? If not, considering the dire forecasts, why?

Why is the answer always the strangulation of the global economy with energy taxes?

robert burns

re 145

Why 100 year forecasts? One reason might be that 20 year forecasts could be verifiable. After 10 years of a 20 year forecast , one might have a clue if the forecast was realistic. After 10 years of a hundred year forecast, any differences could be attributed to short term variation or to weather.

Mark T.

Why is the answer always the strangulation of the global economy with energy taxes?

There’s a one word answer to that question, though the motive behind that one word is debatable.

Mark

Sam Urbinto

#144 and #145 Climate in 100 years, economics in 100 years. Whatever. Simple extrapolations, or complex models you can’t verify or whatever. Guesses do as well (maybe better!) heh

#148 I would think that is just too transparent or obvious for anyone to agree with. 😀

And in general….

I’m trying to figure it out. Do people not usually make direct comments to what I write because it’s too boring, too long, too dificult, make too much sense to argue with, not enough sense to bother, or do I just seem too neutral or wishy-washy to pick a fight with?

Maybe I should go to RC and see which one it is!

heh^2

Steve Milesworthy

#172 Sam
Rereading your posts in this thread there was a mixture of rhetorical questions (which don’t require an answer), a lot of double negatives (which can be hard to follow, imply that you are not confident in what you say and so don’t invite an answer) and some quite reasonable things that few would argue with.

Be more direct! I personally have a tendency for being indirect and overqualifying what I say which means my writing can have less impact (unless it is controversial). Even on this blog, where I do have a contrary opinion to most, I irritate the heck out of Mr Sadlov by not saying out loud enough what he thinks I really believe 🙂

Bill F

#175 Ian,

Unlike some of the very aggressive AGW proponents, I don’t take exception to others and ascribe motives to their actions simply because they don’t see a given issue my way. Lockwood has a pretty distinguished history in solar mechanics research, so I won’t blow off his conclusions and dismiss him as an agenda driven alarmist the way I would with guys like Mann or Hansen who have shown over and over again that they will use whatever shoddy science is necessary to get to the “right” answer. I am inclined to give Lockwood the benefit of the doubt regarding his motives and hope that a response to his paper by somebody like Svensmark or Shaviv will elicit a better explanation from him about why he chose this particular method of smoothing and visual comparison.

Bob Meyer

Re: #167

M Simon wrote:

Proper detectors can differentiate between low energy CRs and high energy CRs. Such detectors have been around a long time.

Some one must have used them somewhere. If not there still ought to be data from various experiments where the background has to be subtracted out to measure the signal. The background of course would be CR data.

Until this week I would have agreed with you. While I was out hunting down weather stations I came upon Priest Mountain, Idaho where I found, along with the MMTS and raingauge, a pyreheliometer made by Belfort Instruments. The address on the manufacturer’s label did not use zip codes so the instrument had to be at least 40 years old. At the time, I had no idea what this instrument was and it took a couple of emails to Belfort to find out. I contacted the Forest Service to see if there were any data available from this instrument and it turns out that there are a great many strip charts that recorded the solar output in watts per sq meter over the last forty years or so. However, the very helpful member of the Forest Service who answered my emails stated

“I am not aware of any scientist that has used this raw data.”

The Priest Mountain Experimental Station is among the better situated rural stations. The temperature data is taken very consistently and there is a set of solar radiance data to go with it, yet it is unlikely that the solar radiance data has ever been used by climate scientists. (Anthony: I will get this and a couple of other station surveys uploaded this weekend)

Here was an opportunity to see if solar radiance correlates with temperature (at least locally) yet the opportunity was ignored. While it’s true that putting strip chart data in a format usable by computers is a big ugly job, that isn’t an excuse to ignore the data especially when you consider the amount of money spent on GW research.

Supposedly, solar output has not varied enough to influence climate and that would explain why no one has used existing solar radiance data (with corresponding temperature data) to investigate a relationship. Would cosmic ray data be treated any differently if the prevailing theory is that there is no relationship between CRs and climate?

Kenneth Fritsch

Re: #173

I think what you are saying is that you would like the authors to be a bit more explicit in the technique they used to come to their conclusions. Maybe they should. But I doubt whether the politicians would ever read the report in detail.

Steve Milesworthy, in my judgment one cannot properly decipher how the critical levels of likelihood and uncertainty were assigned by the authors of the AR4 reports without a more complete disclosure of the methods used by individual groups of authors. That is why I judge the subject of this thread so important and lament it not being discussed more directly and in detail.

I have a personal curiosity about matters such as these that perhaps stems from my curiosity working as scientist, albeit many years ago. I also have a curiosity about the manner in which posters react to these matters. I find that oft times those more in agreement with the conclusions of the AR4 tend to show a surprising lack of interest in and curiosity about these details of likelihood and uncertainty assignments and particularly when these same posters are scientists. On the other hand, I see posters who expressed less or little agreement with the AR4 results seemingly also having little curiosity in the assignment details and apparently because they have discounted the scientific motivations for these assignments more or less out of hand.

DeWitt Payne

Re: #178

Forty years of good pyreheliometer data from a rural site would help a lot with evaluation of whether atmospheric aerosols are really declining or not (or are a significant factor at all). Fifty years would have been better as that would put the start well into the cooling (or at least flat) phase of global temperatures. You would need daily integrated total irradiance data that could then be analyzed for trends. I would worry about long term calibration drift, though. Otherwise, it sounds like a treasure trove.

nevket240

Sorry for being late, its COLD & WET here in Melbourne. oZ ( Global Freezing)
#108
MarkW whats your fascination with Exxon? As an economic entity & a leagl one they have every right to defend themselves. All the money has been driving in a one-way street. So, since the science is settled why don’t we put the $billions into the Heretic side to give their scientists a fair return.
Besides you obviously did not know of Al Gores mentoring by one Armand Hammer(Occidental) or the funding of both Goracle Snr & Jnr into office. Or that to the best of my knowledge Jnr receives $20k Pa from Oxy. So why the hypocrisy??
http://www.independence.net/gore/ even if only half is true God help us.

PeterS

If climate-change theory is an object (which it is) then it cannot be anything other than a ‘made-up’ object. We can fine-tune and swap, at will, the various names we apply to its ‘made-up-ness’, (prediction, projection, prophecy, scenario etc) but the fact remains that it differs from all real objects (resources) present in our space in that it is made-up. It is nothing more than a story about our future. And, like all stories we tell ourselves about the future, its intention is to excite a state of either hope or fear in those who occupy the space into which it is placed (ie everyone) and, as a result, disrupt – or become an obstacle to – our use of real objects.

‘Business-as-usual’ is a very good way of describing our ongoing developmental use of real objects – it could be said we are as advanced as we are today because we’ve been able to sustain business-as-usual for long periods of time without allowing this type of made-up object (when placed in the space) to seriously disrupt, or influence, our use of real ones. The most obvious historical example of this being religious objects.

The current inflation, elaboration and misrepresentation of a miniscule amount of genuinely ‘known’ scientific data can be understood as an abuse of that material in order to manufacture a new made-up object to place into the space and therefore perpetuate the attack on human, business-as-usual, object use. In this sense, a comparison with religious objects is an pertinent one.

When an object is a made-up one (a story guessing the future) – as the AGW object cannot help being – there is no consensus’ in its authenticity… only a collusion’ in its intended use.

Steve Milesworthy

#180 Kenneth
Not wishing to start on social-networking, but if you develop a trust for a person or group of people, and/or if you understand a subject, you don’t need to forensically examine every conclusion they come to even if you disagree with them. If you did so, you’d never get any work done.

As it happens, here’s another take on climate forecasting: looking at what needs to be done to make a climate forecast rather than a projection, and where the limitations lie. (Hopefully you don’t need a subscription…)

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/317/5835/207

(disclosure: I have distant professional links with one of the authors).

Steve Milesworthy

#189 MarkW
No.

Steve Milesworthy

How so?

MarkW

#193,

But since they came up with the correct answer, looking into their data and methods would be a violation of consensus, which is punishable by immediate expulsion from the club.

Sam Urbinto

#174 I know I’m too indirect, I’m trying to be non-confrontational, fair, neutral, and have the discourse be one of thoughts and civility rather than rhetoric and hostility. I was just wondering if anyone was angry at me! :^}

#187 Point taken. That’s why I asked, you know, a little constructive criticism, some positive feedback (rather than a negative forcing, lol). I mostly just write it all for me. Too bad for me I tend to like to write about the same thing all the time. I’ll cut down on that!

Kenneth Fritsch

Steve goes on to point out that for him to actually examine conclusions would be a frustration – as he’d never get any work done’ on the urgent project of arriving at them

That’s worth a chuckle or two, but my point has little to do with Steve Milesworthy’s predilection towards trust and a lot to do with what is proper for the IPCC to do to allow for a complete understanding of what the levels of certainties and likelihoods used by the AR4 authors mean.

MarkW

Now we are back to the old, even bad data is better than no data argument.

I find it amazing that everyone except Milesworthy manages to misread what he writes.

Sam Urbinto

#197, cool.

#200, I have to disagree with you on this one. There are cases where you have to run with what you have, because you either or in combination a) will never know the exact answer or b) you have to do something at that point in time.

Even if that wasn’t true, it doesn’t matter in this case. I think Steve’s correct in #197, “The conclusions are being given because the politicians demand them.” In that context, we can either say “We don’t know” which I can pretty much promise isn’t going to be accepted. Or you make the best estimate you can, because you have to give some sort of answer. Even if not, the person asking is going to take what they are biased towards if there’s contradictory conclusions in your answer, between a selection of answers.

It’s very logical. If I don’t give you what I think to be true, how do I know my viewpoint is going to be represented? At least that gives me a chance to have my hypothesis or theory considered! Anyway, nothing wrong with making estimates and giving percentages. As long as they’re qualified.

Sam Urbinto

Can’t disagree with that. The issue is that that is the situation we’re in, no we shouldn’t be in it, but we are. So we have to deal with it. Why we’re in it and what to do about it are two different things, I think.

Sam Urbinto

Hello, can I see your data and check the model you used? No? Thank you very much, I guess your work ifs fake. Once you prove it isn’t, maybe I’ll trust you. Until then, I’ll consider that you’re a liar. Thank you very much.

Kenneth Fritsch

Hello, can I see your data and check the model you used? No? Thank you very much, I guess your work ifs fake. Once you prove it isn’t, maybe I’ll trust you. Until then, I’ll consider that you’re a liar. Thank you very much.

What pray tell are you talking about here and to whom? You might clarify this by using quotes to which post you are replying.

Steve Milesworthy

#206 Sam
The model I’m familiar with is licensed for research purposes and widely used as such.

PeterS

Your conclusions cannot be given before they have been arrived at – even to authority figures. I wonder if the enormous need to reach a conclusion may result in having a somewhat premature one?

Your ‘trust’ AND ‘distrust’ are both, of course, conclusions – arrived at about a person (or a group). If the cost of ‘earning’ your concluded trust is to have an identical need for arriving at conclusions as you do, then I can fully understand your distrust of Steve McIntyre – a person who clearly has a preference for keeping his options open and tolerating in-conclusion for long enough to allow his curiosity some space to shine through.

Curiosity may well have killed the cat – but conclusion murders curiosity.

PeterS

Ooops. #212 above is a reply to #199 further above.

MarkW

bob,

It’s a useage license. Like when you buy MS Word, you get a key that activates your license. The license gives you permission to use, but not to modify or duplicate.

Steve Milesworthy

#213 Kenneth
The expert judgements have been explained as well as they can be within the reports. You may be asking too much if you want full traceability. What do you want? Transcripts of meetings and phone calls?

#217
Yes I did mean a software license so others can use and modify the code for research purposes rather than an accreditation license that allows it to be used for research purpose.

#212 PeterS
Conclusions are sometimes made prematurely. That’s what balancing risk is all about.

But I don’t see where you got the odd impression that I only trust people if they reach conclusions! As it happens Steve McIntyre has said a number of things (conclusions) with which I agree. Few people are entirely trustworthy or the opposite.

Sam Urbinto

Excuse me for being so unclear. I appologize. That was a notional statement about how some think about trust (or how some actions create anti-trust) and it wasn’t directed to anyone at all or anything anyone said.

Kenneth Fritsch

The expert judgements have been explained as well as they can be within the reports. You may be asking too much if you want full traceability. What do you want? Transcripts of meetings and phone calls?

Steve Milesworthy, you appear to me to have a proclivity for avoiding facing this issue head on and I doubt that from your POV this will change any time soon. The authors had previously been instructed to produce a traceable account using the generalized and recommended process for determining the published levels of certainty for their critical conclusions. The only interpretation of that request that would make sense to me would be for the authors to record an account that is traceable at some future time. What is so difficult to understand about that?

Steve Milesworthy

#221 Steve
No it doesn’t imply any of the thins you state. It implies that it is easy to see how the conclusions were reached based on the evidence used.

Seems as it would suit you down to the ground to have some sort of Sarbanes-Oxley rule book thrown at climate scientists to stop them from doing their work.

I read the minority report and it was full of cr*p 🙂

Matthew Drabik

#186

Dude, put down the Chomsky. That way lays madness.

There are more than sufficient scientific grounds upon which to question AGW.

PeterS

#218

But I don’t see where you got the odd impression that I only trust people if they reach conclusions! As it happens Steve McIntyre has said a number of things (conclusions) with which I agree. Few people are entirely trustworthy or the opposite.

Steve, you quite clearly state that you are disinclined to examine conclusions arrived at by people you trust – even if you disagree with those conclusions. As the quality of their conclusions appears to have very little influence on the trust you place in the people making them… I understand this to mean your trust is decided by the QUANTITY of conclusions arrived at – rather than their QUALITY. This impression is further encouraged by your apparent reluctance (or disinterest) in having those conclusions (and the material used in arriving at them) ‘forensically examined’ by anyone else either.

Perhaps you feel that, by surrendering the conclusions for external examination, YOU would become the distrusted accomplice in this cosy arrangement? – especially if they were discovered to be poor quality.

Hence my observation that the quantity of trust you permit yourself to share with people appears to be inextricably linked to the quantity of conclusions they can arrive at.

steven mosher

re 229.

Hell yes. The first time I got pulled in to answer the questions of an auditor
( what is this INVENTORY WORTH?) I broke into a cold sweat.

I do believe I had an onset of short term memory failure. I also quibbled about forecasts
projections and simulations and models of inventory value and the dog ate my homework

the prospect of going to jail for your claims RIVETS your attention, widens your error estaimtes
as well

Steve Milesworthy

#228 PeterS
I think my head just exploded in a puff of logic.

Where we differ is this. The conclusions are based on an peer reviewed expert assessment of peer reviewed science. If I want I can reread the science and decide whether my assessment of it matches that of the author. I don’t need an audit trail to do this. The conclusions draw my attention to what is important to me. If I live in Tuvalu, I will want to further assess sea-level projections. If I live in Turkey, it’s precipitation projections I’m interested in. I won’t commission a single sea wall or desalination plant without reassessing the evidence for myself and looking for other evidence, and I’ll keep all the phone logs I think I need for that process.

Any mismatches between assessments and evidence will be identified by me and others, and I can take a view on that too.

The prospect of ending up with the reputation of Pons and Fleischmann is also attention rivetting.

As it happens, my personal experience of audits are that they do not always get you what you want. My office building has a high environmental rating. When I checked the environmental audit, it turned out that the building is average, but the procedures for running the building were marked at 100% because they have meetings at the right frequency and they’ve got all the manuals in the right place.

MarkW

Wasn’t the Hockey Stick peer reviewed?

Steve Milesworthy

#233 MarkW
No, the comment is related to whether the conclusions drawn by the IPCC authors can be traced to the peer reviewed literature. It is no secret that just because a paper is peer reviewed does not mean it is correct (ideally it should be correct within the bounds of what is known) or that it will stand the test of time.

MarkW

The test of time is now down to a few months?

Milesworthy, you were the one who was making the claim that the peer review process adds a mark of excellence to the paper that has been peer reviewed.

Such a belief cannot be validated by real world experience.

Jacket

Interesting. Prediction markets work because they accumulate and reward expert’s predictions. How should prediction markets work in general if expert opinion can’t be trusted?